Abby E. Murray
Heirloom
I’m driving while talking
to my eight-year-old
about how even good
people can be jerks
sometimes and there’s
a pause then she asks
from her booster seat
in the back
but how come
you’ve never
been a jerk?
and the question is
a cluster of jewels I can
carry on my collarbone:
my daughter’s belief
that I am too good
to ever be unkind,
because for her, in this
moment, on this day,
I am. Reader, I have plans
for this memory. Why not
take it home to save
for later, keep it in the box
beneath my bed until
the first time she swears
she hates me, her words
choking the house
like oily smoke? Then
I can dig through
my heirlooms for this,
the way she loved me
when she was eight
and I was incompatible
with fault. I’ll fasten it
at the soft of my throat,
that well from which
countless wrong words
have sprung since before
she was born, and I’ll shine,
if only for myself,
still visible in the dark.
Published in MER 21
Abby E. Murray is the editor of Collateral, a literary journal concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone. She teaches rhetoric in military strategy to Army War College fellows at the University of Washington. After serving as poet laureate for the city of Tacoma, Washington, she recently (and temporarily) relocated to Washington DC, where her spouse works in the Pentagon.